Star Citizen - media blowout, Chris Robert's new game

[Pringle]

i don't think it's unreasonable at this point, given the length of time from the original kickstarter and today. yes the scope and feature set has changed dramatically, but that doesn't make taking the money for a project that is supposed to be 18 months out and now going on 48+ without even the original targets released, any more acceptable. they significantly deviated from their end of the agreement, it's not without expectation, that some would want a refund at this point

I'd agree. I can only imagine the trouble the person had to go through to get a $3000 refund.

 

[Lorien]

It was someone with buyers remorse that turned into a pest to customer support staff so CIG simply got rid of him by banning his account and returning the money he spent, just like they did with Derek Smart. Everything else is just spin by people with an agenda to make it sound as if CIG was forced to do it.

This is the only relevant quote:

...having reviewed complainant's interactions with our customer service agents, we have determined that it is also in our interest to terminate his participation in our fund raising community. We are therefore agreeing to close complainant's account permanently and we will issue a refund of his pledge promptly.

Meanwhile, Mark Hamill plugs the game during Star Wars Celebration 2016



And Mark Strong takes a selfie of his in-game character during a break of shooting pick-ups. Post-production should be wrapping up before Gamescom.

 

[DWolvin]

Yea- a 980Ti is starting to look good since the price should drop soon and there are plenty of waterblocks available.

 

[Yippee38]

So if they stopped developing today, you'd be happy?

No. But Brules said, "4 years almost and still no game." He didn't say, "4 years almost and still no finished game". Besides, I don't think SC will ever be "finished", just like most MMORPGs are never finished. Hell, they're still doing dev stuff on EQ.

The game definitely isn't done. At the same time, there is definitely playable content there: A game. Maybe not a very good one, or very much of one, but there's a game there.

 

[Lorien]

Ships confirmed for the Free flight week starting today:

Sabre



Mustang beta



Hornet

 

[Ritorix]

If anyone tries the Hornet this weekend, let me recommend my favorite loadout: a size 4 combine up on top, and a trio of tarantula size 3s on the wings and nose. All rentable if you have REC. They end up almost sharing an aiming PIP, are all ballistic, and pretty much blow the shit out of anything.

I got the Combine gun as part of that Buccaneer upgrade deal. Then I CCU'd the bucc to a freelancer for free (saving a CCU back to the bucc for later), which provides tarantulas to use on the hornet. It also gives you size 3 missiles and the racks for them, that also fit on the hornet. Having a hornet with that loadout is probably close to what a bucc will feel like, weapon-wise, though the bucc will also be more maneuverable and less tanky.

 

[Lorien]

Free Fly live now: Summer Free Fly 2016 - Roberts Space Industries

Greetings!
Roberts Space Industries is proud to offer a summer free flight trial of Star Citizen! During this week long free fly you will get a chance try out the game and fly fighter ships like the Mustang Beta, the Sabre and the F7C Hornet!

Create an account, then enter this promo code to gain access to play the game:

SUMMERFREEFLY2016

If you've participated in previous free fly events you don't need to create a new account. All you have to do is sign in to the old account, enter the code in the page above and download the game.

 

[Lorien]

Jum Point issue 04.07: [JUMP POINT] JP 04-07 July 16, 2016 • /r/RSIsubscriber

 

[Lorien]

Some more confirmed features coming with 2.5:

Info about Landing Zones 2.0

"Landing Zones 2.0" might otherwise be referred to as "Landing Pads 2.0." It has nothing to do with previously referred to "Landing Zones" like ArcCorp or Nyx. It's more a continuing refinement of how you can approach and land on the platforms throughout the Stanton System, like Kareah, CryAstro, Port Olisar, and the upcoming GrimHex.

Items 2.0 is a further refinement of the Item Port system introduced in 2.4
One new addition is how we interact with items in game. Before when you used F to interact with things you could only do one thing "USE", now holding down the key brings up several different ways to interact with items with proper context.

The latest bug smashers shows a sneak peek of it in action

 

[Lorien]

Around the Verse 100 part IV
- Free Fly currently underway and will end next Monday July 25th.
- Drake Dragonfly has been moved into active development.
- Argo is flight ready and just waiting for 2.5 to drop and will also be made available in the pledge store.

- GrimHex has indoor hangars at the back of the asteroid in addition to the outside landing pads.

- Station will have incremental additions released in the next 3 patches which will add extra content and gameplay. There will be a bar, a race track that goes through the asteroid (you'll be able to bet on those races), plus more.

- New, faster, cockpit entry animations


And I love how they like to tease us lol; Idris inconspicuously chilling in the background

 

[FearTheCow]

Some more confirmed features coming with 2.5:

Info about Landing Zones 2.0


Items 2.0 is a further refinement of the Item Port system introduced in 2.4
One new addition is how we interact with items in game. Before when you used F to interact with things you could only do one thing "USE", now holding down the key brings up several different ways to interact with items with proper context.

The latest bug smashers shows a sneak peek of it in action

Is it just me, or is 90% of that patch list ships? Where are the content patches? I would think that for a game that was promised to be finished and released a while ago that they would have a good chunk of actual finished content.

 

[Lorien]

Don't want to be rude but it sounds like you have absolutely no idea how the game is being made.

You're incorrectly assuming that there is no content when in fact all of the work for SQ42 (single player campaign) has been kept tightly under wraps to not spoil it.

They've only given us some brief glimpses of locations from the single player campaign like Shubin mining station.


Or huge capital ships like the Bengal carrier


They have teams working on multiple aspects of the game in parallel, it would make no sense to have the people in charge of creating and implementing ships not do anything while the rest work on something else that's being kept under wraps. At this point all of the ships needed for SQ42 are done or close to completion, which was a priority and now some of the the ship team has started working on ships that will only be seen in the Persistent Universe (which is entirely separate from the single player campaign).

 

[Quartz-1]

I don't know why they bother creating all the different ships. Just create a ship creation system and let the players create their own ships.

Oh wait, people pay for ships...

 

[Pringle]

I don't know why they bother creating all the different ships. Just create a ship creation system and let the players create their own ships.

Oh wait, people pay for ships...

Fuck 90% of their $100-plus million came from people buying ships lol

 

[shifty68]

Because any ship creation system would be impossible to ballance and it wouldn't have the all round fidelity that we and they want.

 

[Lorien]

Yeah people are stupid and would just turn to making shitty looking overpowered ships. Or worse they'd just copy one created by someone else 'cause they lack the imagination and skill to come up with something on their own. Look at games like Diablo 3 where everyone copies character builds from those with more knowledge of the game.

P.S: And they already let people create their own ships and submit them to be included in the game. A lot of those people who participated in the competition were eventually hired and are currently working as CIG staff all over the world.

The Next Great Starship - Roberts Space Industries

 

[Pringle]

Yeah people are stupid and would just turn to making shitty looking overpowered ships.

Doesn't buying a shitty overpowered ship have the same effect?

 

[Lorien]

Nah, 'cause those won't really exist in the game (ships follow a rock, paper, scissor design with no one ship being clearly superior to another in every category against ships of the same class. There are factors like armor, armament, power plant, hardpoints, max combat maneuvering speed, max cruise speed, jump capability and more and no single ship will be the best at all of them) and we haven't even started focused balance testing which will come during beta. Then again there are actually people out there that genuinely think one ship will be better than other based on price alone which proves rather well my point about people being stupid.

 

[Lorien]

Captain Noah White, Ian Cunningham's character fully in-game

And Lt. Cdr. Steve 'Old Man' Colton played by Mark Hamill

 

[Lorien]

PCgames.de magazine visited the CIG Frankfurt offices and got to play a bunch of the updates that are coming soon to the game.

Brief summary of the extensive 10 page article, stolen from reddit:

2.6 will launch Star Marine as separate module just like Arena Commander, this was also played by staff of PC Games and they are saying it's much more polished on the FPS side and feels a lot better than current rudimentary FPS in the PTU. - Interesting side-note: they talked about map->s.

2.7 will bring procedural planets and you will be able to travel the whole stanton system and all planets and moons can be directly approached down to the surface.

• They say the new lighting system as part of the procedural planets build looks much more natural.
  
  
• They say that approaching the planet looks and technically feels better than with Elite Dangerous.
  
  
• You can land anywhere manually, automatic landing gets you to fixed positions i.e. landing zones.
  
  
• Microtech and Hurston come in follow-up patches after 2.7
  
  
• They aim to have Stanton fully playable i.e. with all stations and landing zones (according to CR about 40 locations) by end of 2016
  
  
• There will be more jobs and missions as well.
  
  
• Trading will be in by then
  
  
• Chris describing that missions accepted up in space stations could lead you eventually down to planet surfaces, not clear if this is going to be in with 2.7 but seemingly something SQ42 will benefit from.
  
  
• Planets and moons are revolving around suns, with naturally simulated day and night cycles. When flying over the ocean they were noticing that the horizon had a correctly simulated curve. Trees and Animals seemingly are planned (edit: doesn't seem to be in with 2.7, sorry) - they have them seemingly setup in pre-made templates they call eco-systems - these can be brushed over the planet surface, some magic blends the transitions to make it look naturally and consistent.
  
  
• Planetary surface and topograhy details are controlled by a dynamical LOD system.
  
  
• Some pop-up was visible during the planetary approach but they described it as impressive regardless.
  
  
• They were also impressed with the cloud system, which wasn't just a simple texture layer but seemingly is described what I assume would be volumetric, i.e. they have deepth and height and impact visibility, leading to mountain crests piercing through clouds and valleys being covered.
  
  
• They are writing that there isn't any artificially restricted view range, visibility is rather a result from the volumetric calculation of the athmosphere.
  
  
• Parallax-Occlusion maps with dynamic tessellation is used for the surface details.
  
  
• GTX 980 was used with 100 fps on the planetary surface, so performance seems to be pretty good already, sorry, that was just editor performance - in-game performance was 45fps
  
  
• Some stuff about the subsumption-AI saying NPCs might have hobbies and a virtual mind, allowing them to remember the player or be influenced in his opinions by the player. To avoid performance issues, they seemingly control the update cycles for NPC AI based on player proximitiy i.e. update cycles go to 1hz instead of 60hz if no one is around.
  
  
• Head bob will apparently also be customizable, think severe (realistic), semi realistc and non.

Album from the magazine

 

[Tup3x]

Wow... Just wow.

 

[Lorien]

If you haven't read the latest Jump Point, the GamesCom booth is the first time they have a properly designed custom booth. The layout of the booth is a copy of the bridge of the Idris with several green screens. They'll be live streaming through all 5 days of GamesCom featuring 4 different and well known Star Citizen community twitch streamers.

 

[Pez]

Question for the die hard fans: do you all want to spend time running around space stations? What I loved about games like Privateer and Jumpgate is that I didn't have to spend time docked doing nothing fun unless I chose to. In this, I'm concerned that I'll have to leave my ship to go to a store to buy things. Or will I be able to buy everything directly from my ship, and everything outside is just for immersion?

 

[Lorien]

While you won't be able to do EVERYTHING from your ship you have your Mobiglas (holographic interface with apps that projects from your forearm, think super mobile phone with all kinds of apps) from which you'll be able to reach "online" store fronts to buy stuff like weapons, armor, ships, etc and have them either delivered to your hangar or you can go pick them up at the store which would be cheaper since there won't be delivery charges. That said not ALL things will be able to be purchased through mobiglas; Black market stuff like illegal drugs, prohibited alien tech, etc. etc. will likely not have an "online" store front.

From mobiglas you'll be able to manage pretty much everything, finances, ship status, shopping, contacts, missions, etc. etc.

This is the official reveal article
mobiGlas - Roberts Space Industries

Here's a video explaining it in further detail



And this is the latest mention of it, with a redesigned layout, you will have the ability to use it in 2D or 3D mode plus starmap integration

 

[Smoeki]

I don't know if you'll be able to buy stuff from the ship or most likely from your Mobi-glass while in your ship. However even if you can the current plans will have you either paying for someone to load/offload the cargo or do it yourself so it's not going to be a quick couple of clicks and you're done, there will be downtime. The larger the ship the longer the wait, so unless you plan to sit in the ship you may as well go do something else like shopping, looking for jobs, or maybe doing some games like Star Marine or Arena Commander. You may be able to log into another character while your ship gets loaded, so that could be a easy way to get more done.


Do I want to run around space stations? sometimes yes and sometimes no, the game isn't simply a cargo running sim, so if the gameplay mechanics were sped up simply for cargo but not mining, salvage,research, repairs or what have you then it would end up giving an unfair advantage.

 

[DWolvin]

Huh- I missed the MobiGlass UI vid, thanks Lorien!

 

[Lorien]

Ya, and those who backed before reaching $42M will get a special edition of it

Every player who backs before we hit $42 million will start the game with their own, visually distinctive mobiGlas “ExoGlas” rig which can be used to access the Observist at any time...
This backer-exclusive mobiGlas kit will come pre-loaded with additional galactic information that new players would ordinarily need to explore or barter to fill out

So we get all the historical and statistical info from the Observist articles published on the website accessible in real time from within the game.

 

[DWolvin]

Yea, some of the little perks from back in the day seem like they will be much cooler due to the expansion of the overall game.

 

[Wildace]

I have not really been paying much attention lately, are they doing gamescom trophy flair again this year? need to know if i should become a subscriber for august lol.

 

[Lorien]

Someone asked Disco_Lando on the latest reverse the verse last Friday and he said the only person that can answer that would be Alexis and she wasn't there 'cause she was with Ben in the hospital.

I'm sure there'll be one like they've done for the past years, people love those inexpensive collectibles and it helps with funding. Win win.

 

[Wildace]

I am a sucker for the trophies since i have them all so far, gotta collect em all trophymon

 

[rezerekted]

Did they hire Derek Smart as their product manager?

 

[Lorien]

Around the Verse 3.1

- Devs have fixed one of the major 2.5 blockers and are about to release it to the Evocati group for testing (I'll have to sign an NDA if I get picked again), and after that comes PTU and finally Live.
- Atmospheric flight model already being worked on.
- Aerodynamic qualities of every ship will have a direct effect on how they handle in atmo. For example a Gladius will have better maneuverability, roll and pitch than ships with a higher drag coefficient. A Starfarer and bulky ships of its type will feel like driving a bus through the air. Losing a wing in atmo will be correctly modeled and affect your drag coefficient.
- Atmospheric density will be correctly modeled with increased density as you get closer to the surface. There will be pockets with varying densities which will cause turbulence as you fly through. Increased density also affects your max safe speed.

Star Citizen Atmospheric flight - Create, Discover and Share GIFs on Gfycat

- Hornet, Super Hornet and Freelancer will be the first ships to get the new quick entry animations.
- Female model is done and Male model has been updated to the same quality of the Female.
- Reliant is done, flight ready in 2.5

Star Citizen Reliant flight ready - Create, Discover and Share GIFs on Gfycat
Star Citizen Reliant flight ready - Create, Discover and Share GIFs on Gfycat


- All locations will have unique styles of clothing sold in their shops. i.e. the style of clothing sold at Grim-Hex will only be available there.

 

[Lorien]

A few new bits of info on the Caterpillar from RTV:

- You will need about 8 people to be fully operational
- Half the ship is swappable, as in half the modules can just be disconnected and you can mix and match different ones.
- You can load it out with nothing but Dragonfly carrying modules and launch a swarm of them.
- Size is between Constellation and Retaliator.
- In terms of polygon count it is worth at least as much as 3 single seater ships.

 

[Pez]

Stuff...

Thanks for the info. As an original and veteran backer, I get the special thing. I'm deliberately not keeping current with the state of the game, as it will just drive me crazy that I don't have the cash to buy all the ships, or that it still isn't being released. I just maintain my account, and occasionally look for some info to see if it's heading in the direction I hope it is.

Watched the vids, definitely looks like it will be a slick interface.

 

[Lorien]

Around the verse 3.2, UK studio update:

Landing system 2.0
FPS Cover system
Argo details
Catastrophic damage of capital ships



P.S: 2.5 possibly going to PTU this weekend

 

[rezerekted]

The latest bug smashers shows a sneak peek of it in action

Keyboard pounder detected. I have a friend who does that, annoying.

 

[Lorien]

German PC Games magazine posted their interview with CR

New server mesh infrastructure and code being integrated into the game will make it possible to have thousands of players in the same area as opposed to the smaller (50-100 player) instancing method they originally planned.

Related info: libyojimbo/README.md at master · networkprotocol/libyojimbo · GitHub

 

[Stiler]

The capital ship damage model looks bloody insane, all those details.

 

[Lorien]

Ya, that will be used for both SQ42 and the PU since both will have missions for you to explore or be in ship wrecks. The best part is everything you saw was done in-engine.